And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.
My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.
But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.
Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.
The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.
If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.
I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to seserve that you should.
But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.
That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.
Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend’s house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good.